I'm back again. I bought my ranger a long composite bow thinking he would do better with it. He is only level 2 so I don't know if that affects my problem. I tried to remove his long bow and the game won't let me. I can not physically take the bow from the weapon slot. I keep getting a message that it can't be removed. Can the Ranger not use a composite long bow? He has the skills for bow.

That is strange. Are you sure the message is saying exactly that his longbow cannot be removed? It's possible that you can't put a composite longbow in that slot (e.g. if you have less than 15 Str or if you have a shield equipped), but I've never heard of it the other way around. I'm assuming you don't have a cursed longbow because I've never heard of one in the game. You character level shouldn't have any effect whatsoever on the ability to use a bow, and a ranger is certainly allowed to use one.

It's possible that it's a minor glitch - do a quicksave and quickload, then try again.

Yes it says "this item can not be removed". It is a standard long bow that was purcheased in the beginning of the game. His strength is 16. It makes no sense to me that I can't remove it. I tried removing the arrows first thinking they werekeeping it from being removed. That didn't make any difference.

My Thief/Mage has the identify spell memorized in her book. When I try to id an item the menu comes up do I want to use spell or scroll but they are both darkened out so I can't use either one. She has enough stats to use the spell book and i know for a fact the spell is memorized Yet I can't use the skill.

Maybe a reinstall would change this? Or could there be some other reason I can't remove the bow or use the id spell? This makes no sense to me.

I don't know about the bow, but as for not being able to cast Identify; are you wearing an armour? You can't cast arcane spells in armours. Can the Thief/Mage cast other spells?

Yes. It's a bug. I've never mentioned it before myself--just lived with it. It seems to happen with certain character and combinations of weapons consisting of a bow/sling and a melee weapon of some type. I just save, quit, and restarted to "burp the bug."

I can say for sure that the greyed-out Identify is because your thief/mage is still wearing armor. I occasionally have that happen to me, too, when I forget to take the armor off my T/M, bard, or whatever.

As for the bow-removal bug, take Roboghost's advice. Now that I think about it, I can remember this happening to me before, but it's pretty infrequent.

You and stratos are right. The thief/Mage had plain leather armor on. It slipped right by me. Sorry about the post on this I will try to be more careful next time.

I restarted many times trying to get the bow to be removed finally I gave up and resorted to using Dale keeper. I hated to do so but really had no choice. I guess the alternative was to let him die but I hated to do that for a bug/ glitch.

There's a armour available later in the game that allows you to cast spells while wearing it, but it's a chainmail and unusuable by thief/mages. For this character, you should really consider using spells like Armor and Shield. The Shield spell gives you the same AC as a scale mail (if I'm not mistaken) and the Armor spell, while not offering the same protection as Shield, last much longer, 9 hours.

I just finished up the Vale of Shadows and bought the shield spell. I found the armor spell in the vale so I am set now for that. I also bought Melfi's acid arrow for the upcoming temple area.

Btw, when we are by rangers... do you know this feature???

When you create a fighter with 2* specialization in long sword, he has 1 and 1/2 attacks. But when you create a ranger with same stats and specialization, he has 2 and 1/2 attack, which is total brutal at beginning. But when you equip him the shield with sword however, his number of attacks lowers to 1 and 1/2. Strange, huh? Bug or feature?
I always thought fighter is better melee warrior then ranger...

P.S. This works same also with bow.

[ 10-12-2004, 09:23 AM: Message edited by: galdur ]

Feature, done to emulate a Ranger's dual wielding. In BG2 you can actually dual wield, but that wasn't implemented in IWD due to time limitations or so. So as not to nerf Rangers (who are supposed to get free proficiency in dual wielding) too much, they gave them an extra attack when wielding a one-handed weapon with a free off-hand.

<font color = mediumspringgreen>My heart goes out for you. You are having problems that I have not seen nor heard of. And you are all patched up, too. Really odd...

I would not feel bad about using Dale Keeper to correct the bug with the Ranger. You are not cheating (and if you are, so what?). And, yes, (in reply to a question I think you post in this or another thread) if it was me I'd re-install.</font>

</font>--------------------<font color = mediumspringgreen>
What's a party,
without a song?
Bards ROCK!
Party On!!
</font>

and a fighter... cannot dualwield???

It is a little dull for me.

AND... dualwield bow? Ehm, that means, he takes two bows and shot with them simultaneously? Cool.
OK, but why only 1 arrow will shoot then?